Apichatpong Weerasethakul

When Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives unexpectedly won the Palme d’Or at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, it brought belated fame to Thailand’s finest director. His meditative and magical films are suffused with his Buddhist belief in past lives and spirits, alongside a love of experimental cinema, and of lushly wooded north-east Thailand, where he was raised and works. Weerasethakul – Joe to his friends – was a quietly thoughtful presence when he sat down with LWLies recently to discuss the cinema as time machine, government suppression and why he hates The Godfather, among other things.

LWLies: You mention Uncle Boonmee in Tropical Malady. Had you been thinking of him all that time as a subject?

Weerasethakul: Yes, a book inspired the movie, with almost the same title – ‘A Man Who Can Recall His Past Life’[written by a Buddhist abbot about the real Uncle Boonmee’s memories of reincarnation]. I loved the idea of making a movie about him back then, but I didn’t think it would become a reality because the story was quite complex. I realised that I couldn’t do that, so I put a lot of myself in, and the book has become just an inspiration.

Is part of the logic of your films that things can change without any explanation, as in a dream? There are no barriers between one thing and another. You’re sitting eating dinner, and suddenly there’s a ghost next to you. Things flow…

Merge! I think so. Because that’s how I experience Thailand – with the co-existence of so-called progress and the beliefs and traditions, which are very well integrated. Also in Uncle Boonmee, it’s the same thing – the revelations and the projections, almost, of the idea of connectedness with other lives, whether with animals or with loved ones, the ghost of your wife, your son, who could be projections. The film is a unit of remembrance, dealing with the chopping of time.

The quote at the start: “Facing the jungle… my past lives as an animal and other beings rise up before me” – is that how you feel when you look at the jungle in north-east Thailand? In the films, it’s all hallucinatory, vivid greens and blues, like being in it’s a hyper-real state…

Yes, but when I’m in the jungle I feel scared! Because we’ve been so alienated from it for a long time, and we don’t know the animals any more, we don’t speak with them, and the logic of our lives is further apart from the so-called primitive time. But in this movie, it’s an artificial jungle, a cinematic jungle – it’s not like Tropical Malady. Because this one is a tribute to old kinds of cinema, and throws my actors into old movie settings.

Could you describe that old Thai cinema, and how you came across it?

I could have gone back to the film archive to look for those old movies on television. But I needed to do it from memory, and be very spontaneous. It’s a mixture of those films, not from specific movies, but the idea of acting, and lighting, with slower rhythms… it has special effects where the monster is always hidden in the dark. Which is very scary for a kid. But I think it was to conceal the bad make-up job, that they didn’t put too many lights on!

Would you have been watching Hollywood movies at the same time – on TV, or at the cinema?

Mostly in cinema. TV was mostly Thai. But Hollywood movies, yes, many kinds – Spielberg and Lucas, of course. Then there was a VHS time when I was a teenager, with films by Fellini, Coppola… I was really drawn to these films. I went to Bangkok and I was recommended, ‘This is an important film,’ and I bought these tapes and I rewatched them, and after a while I thought, ‘Wow, this is really something.’ So I kept rewatching 8½and The Conversation. I watched The Godfather, but I couldn’t really see why it was so good. Honestly, I don’t like it. But The Conversation I watched many times.

What was great about that film for you?

It made me feel that is cinema. It’s not grand, it’s life. That’s maybe why I didn’t connect with The Godfather, because it’s not like this. I’d rather watch Star Wars, you know – they’re so far apart. But The Conversation is something I can relate to on a human level.

The real Uncle Boonmee, when he was talking to the abbot who knew him, said that when he saw past lives in his mind the experience was like watching films. Do you think this century we’ve had of watching films in the cinema has made it easier to envision past lives?

I don’t think so. It has more to do with the scientific revolution, that makes you aware of the ability of the mind. Movies for me is another thing. It’s a preservation tool in a more philosophical way – a romantic way to look at past lives. But to truly remember past lives is more scientific, and an ability in our minds we haven’t tackled.

But you’ve said the same about cinema, that we don’t fully understand what it is yet – what it can do, and what it’s doing to us.

Right. It’s a mystery, and it’s hard to figure out. Each film is a different animal when I start it, and when a film is done it’s not done. It’s not like what Hitchcock said, that a movie is finished when a script is finished – it’s the opposite for me. The script is just a conception.

Watching your films, they seem more mysterious the further we get into them. Are they mysterious to you as you’re making them?

Yes. To get to know each film takes time. Like in this particular film, it’s not my compatible territory to make a classical shot, reaction shot, medium-shot film, and I was lost in a way. So I worked a lot with the editor to make sense of the whole thing. And finally, I still don’t know. Maybe in a year or two I’ll look at it, and I will know more.

Do you think films are part of the natural world – as well as the spiritual world?

I think so. Because of it being to do with time. It’s about the working of the mind, and how you trigger the brain’s functions – so it’s natural in that way, that we need it, like we need to dream – in the same way, we need to go to cinema.

Have you been in the cinema watching a film, and it’s had an almost supernatural effect on you – elevated you out of your material state?

Yes, yes. That movie was Good Bye, Dragon Inn. Because it brought me back to my home town. It’s the same kind of cinema, and similar kinds of characters, and it made me cry inside. It’s one of the best films for me.

Do you feel in making Uncle Boonmee, with the references it has to old Thai cinema, you’re almost capturing the souls of those old films – the memories of that cinema and those styles?

Yes. But my own takes. And not really for the purpose of keeping them alive – more as a farewell. To say goodbye to these dying things – these dying styles.

You’ve talked about recent Thai governments suppressing and controlling things. Has that affected the survival of older sorts of cinema, and is that something you’re fighting in your films?

The Thai government really suppress and marginalise people who practise certain kinds of culture. But at the same time, the filmmakers are doing that to themselves – with self-censorship, and through not knowing how to express ourselves politically, because it’s not in the education system to question. The effects are not only in cinema but also in books and other things. But lately, with the proliferation of the internet, people need to try to re-educate ourselves about what really happened in our history, and to realise that we’ve been silenced, and fed with wrong information. And the challenge is how to learn this language, to speak about it in the cinema. It’s not writing a book or a blog, it’s something else. It’s like relearning again, and it’s difficult for people. So that’s why you see there are no political films from Thailand, at all.

How did you first learn to question? Was watching those old videos like The Conversation part of learning how to have a questioning mind?

Well, in the cinema world, yes. It was learning from the rebels at how to make films – especially when I was studying filmmaking at the Art Institute of Chicago, watching the American experimental films. I remember I was very struck by Len Lye’s Free Radicals – it’s a scratch-film. It’s a personal film, and it’s the first time I realised this is what I really want to do. Which was different to what I’m doing now, because it’s purely experimental. What I do is more experimental narrative. So that was in a cinematic way. But in a social, political way, it’s more recent, for the past five years, when the political situation in Thailand has become very heated. I joined the protests, and joined groups, and then I detached myself from them, and I read lots of books, and the internet.

Has that felt very dangerous – to take a side in that heated situation?

Yes. I mean, I don’t feel danger for myself. But I feel there’s a danger in Thailand – at least a psychological danger, an anger that people feel. You can see on the web boards how people attack and approve of killing. These things are really alarming and really shocking, to realise that we’ve been living in this state for a long time.

Do you feel you’re more oppressed than you used to be, and more aware of being oppressed?

Yeah. And oppressed through the media. And as I’m a medium-maker myself, it’s quite alarming, like 1984 or that movie where that guy blew up the British parliament, V for Vendetta, to feel powerlessness. It doesn’t mean I feel superior, but it feels sad that we are in this pool of lies and manipulation, like sometimes there’s no solution.

When you watched films like The Conversation and 8½, did that make you feel liberated?

Yes, yes. It’s a dream of possibility, and the world is bigger now – both big and small, because the internet is so small, but suddenly you realise the differences in the world.

Do you feel more free by making your films?

I think so. I try not to censor myself, and to relearn how to speak, and the possibilities are endless.

The soldiers in Tropical Malady are seen as defenders of the homeland. In Uncle Boonmee, you have a sequence of stills of soldiers killing the past, really. Is that a statement you wanted to make?

Not on the surface, more underneath. Because the film talks about memory, and for me the political side is more direct and focused in the installation part. This still sequence in Boonmee is a record of the time I spent in the village, and the teenagers there play the soldiers, and we had fun making a story up. So it’s more my memory of that region, and working there, combined with Uncle Boonmee’s voice. It has a political image, but it doesn’t say it directly.

It’s more powerful that way – seeing the soldiers suddenly, with this idea in the script that they’re turning ghosts and past people into ‘the disappeared’, which is a politically loaded word. It’s like they’re assassinating the past.

Yeah. It’s my dream. It’s my real dream. I was thinking when I woke up, ‘Oh, this is very clichéd – it’s like Chris Marker!’ But it was so vivid, and so I wrote this dream down, about the past, and travelling in this time machine. It was more elaborate in the installation, which uses the same dialogue. We used some in the film, to present this as my dream, a filmmaker’s dream – and Uncle Boonmee is just a puppet for me, to speak my dream out.

Did you see your dream as stills?

No. When I dream, it’s moving images, but within that dream there was a still image, of a statue of a soldier holding a man. I tried to put that into the film, but it didn’t fit.

Do dreams have a reality for you, in the same way that past lives can?

Not really. But I try to associate in movies how the logic of dreams is actually like life, but in a more heightened state of consciousness. So I’ve been writing down my dreams, and making movies to reflect those feelings.

Your idea of cinema keeping the past alive is interesting. Part of the fascination of watching, say, Battleship Potemkin isn’t so much the story, but seeing Russian sailors from 80 years ago sitting around…

…Alive. Yeah, that’s cinema!

Did you have to detach yourself from the Thai film industry to do the work you’ve done?

No. In fact I had to integrate. Because we share the same facilities and crew-members. So the line between the so-called studio film and independent film is quite thin. We don’t have a union, so people move from one kind of film to another, and use the same post-production houses.

Are you seen by the Thai authorities as a dissident – an enemy of the government?

Me? Mmm… no. But I’m always sceptical of government action. I feel that one leg is in the boat and the other is out. Because I’m a board member of the new film archive, which is to preserve films and promote cinema. And it’s been really great, because all the members have good intentions. But at the same time it’s been difficult, because we still rely on funding from the government, and sometimes it’s frustrating, because you realise that the people in the government don’t know anything about cinema, or even what culture means. They only focus on tradition. So it’s been a strange feeling for me. I feel both sorry and content for this system. Because it’s tax money that we pay for these people who don’t have a clue, but at the same time who has a clue? We don’t have a solid education like here [in Britain], to appreciate film.

Do you feel you’re still finding your way, and educating yourself in cinema?

Definitely. The medium’s still young, and there are a lot of new possibilities.

If you think of past lives, and how far back they can go, cinema is just the blink of an eye…

Yeah, yeah, for sure.

Uncle Boonmee at the end of his life worries about his karmic state, as he’s killed lots of people and animals. How do you think your karmic state is?

I feel content about life now, and that I have a satisfactory job, and I am happy about doing films. So I’m okay to die today. I wouldn’t be sad.

Do you think the films you’re making are good karma in themselves – that you’re doing something good to the balance of the universe?

I don’t know. When you think about film, it’s elemental – I love it so much, but at the same time when you talk about the world, and the ability of the mind, the film medium is really like a toy. I always have to remind myself, ‘Don’t take it too seriously.’

What do you take more seriously than cinema?

Breathing! To be alive, to be aware in the moment. My family. Really clichéd, I know!

Did winning at Cannes change anything for you?

I was frozen. Because I really like to work, but now it’s a lot of doing press to support the film. And in a way it’s good that I meet interesting people like you, and to meet the audience is really important. The movie is made for a specialised audience, and to find them is very tricky. I don’t watch them in the cinema – I don’t watch the film any more! But it’s good to have feedback afterwards.

And what’s the film that you’re itching to make?

There’s a new project that I’m dealing with about the Mekong River, in the same [north-east] region. It’s the thing that really interested me when I made this Primitive project, to see the massive flooding and drought from the river that flows through Laos, Cambodia, China, Vietnam, and that affects so many lives, and many fingers are pointed to China, and Thailand too, because of the new dams. But nobody knows the truth, because China has only partially cooperated, and they say it’s not their fault! I’m interested in this issue, not to point fingers, but to reflect on the water element, and how it affects people. That, and also another project with a very big budget, that’s maybe a dream, called ‘Utopia’ – maybe it is a utopia! It’s about science-fiction – the future of the past, a certain kind of science-fiction that is dying…

When you watch big-budget, CGI-heavy, very artificial-looking Hollywood films, do they seem as potent, or inspire you to dream as much, as movies like The Conversation? Or do they seem a lesser cinema?

Oh no, no. If I have time I always go to Hollywood films. Because sometimes I have had enough of festival films, and in Hollywood films I just see the elements that I like, the special effects where hundreds of people work on 10 seconds. It’s a miracle!

It’s a different sort of cinema than seeing some sailors of the past lounging around – you might have memories of the film, but it’s not capturing a memory of something real.

It’s a different kind of magic. It’s what will drive to the future, all these special effects – and how we think about time as well. My nephew has a different sense of time than me. This is something that I really appreciate, this change – and [finding] how I fit in.